Domaine Vincent Latour

Although the Latour-Labille family has been making wine since 1792, Vincent Latour began turning heads in Burgundy after the release of his 2006 vintage when he was nominated as winemaker of the year by the well-respected local magazine, Bourgogne Aujourd’hui. He has also been recognized several times as the best new/young winemaker in the Côte de Beaune and in the Côte de Nuits as the result of an annual blind tasting hosted by local vignerons.

Vincent is hand-crafting exceptional Meursault from eight hectares of vines. His father used to sell off their grapes, but when Vincent took over from his father in 1998, he decided to bottle all of their production, roughly 4,000 cases. Vincent made some improvements over the years, including using whole cluster fermentation, integrating demi-muids and foudres into the mix, and a longer élévage. A mix of used and new demi-muids, barrels, and foudres are used for aging in order to have better control of the oak influence. Work in the vineyard follows lutte raisonée methods and native yeasts are used for fermentation. After pressing, must goes into 600L barrels or foudres.

The name of the winery was changed from Latour-Labille to Domaine Latour starting with the 2010 vintage.

2015 Vintage Notes from Allen Meadows, Burghound, June 2017:

Vincent Latour now runs this 8.7 ha domaine that consists of 7 ha planted to chardonnay and 1.7 ha planted to pinot noir. The domaine has existed since 1972 under the name of Domaine Jean Latour-Labille et Fils. Vincent joined his father in 1998 and then in 2010 the name was changed to its present eponymous incarnation. Latour described the 2015 growing season as "relatively easy as there wasn't much disease pressure and the hot and dry weather kept it at bay. August though caused us a bit of consternation as it was so hot that you had to decide between picking early in the middle of a heat wave or wait a few days in the hopes of rain that would bring cooler conditions. I can't remember the last time anyone in Burgundy prayed for rain just before a harvest but that's just what we did! And, as luck would have it, rain it did and as hoped it brought with it much cooler temperatures. We chose to attack the harvest on the 3rd of September and brought in spotlessly clean fruit that possessed potential alcohols that ranged between 12.5 and 13%. Yields were variable as our vines that had been struck by hail gave us between 60 and 70% of a normal crop but the non-hailed vines were close to 100%. It was clear from the beginning that the wines were going to be very rich so I used very little lees and did almost no lees stirring as there was no point in trying to make even more opulent whites. I like the style of the wines quite a bit because while they are certainly ripe and rich they're also fresh and vibrant. I believe that they're going to be very popular and particularly so with restaurants or those clients who prefer early-drinking whites." Latour noted that the Poruzots was still fermenting and thus was not presented for review.